• Question: How much do you think your research will develop in the next 20 years, and what would you like to achieve from this?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Great question xxsinalixx, I hope my research will develop a lot over the next 20 years….no doubt it will, and in 20 years time I will wonder why I did what I do now as we’ll know so much more! I hope in 20 years time we are still able to have clean water to drink, and have no problems with the water supply, and that people who currently have problems with not having a good supply of clean drinking water wont have to worry about that any more. In addition I hope we can learn to control polution, and can make a way of removing pollutants from water, and then making useful things from them.

    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Nice question xxsinalixx,
      Phwoar 20 years is a long time, so I hope my research would have developed quite a lot by then. It takes quite a long time to become a successful scientist because you have to learn so much about your subject. Every scientist, no matter how clever or old they are, is still learning every day!

      I hope that in 20 years I might be running my own lab at a university somewhere nice and hot. I hope I would still be researching the chemistry of the ocean, and I’d like to be a specialist in deep sea chemistry.

      I would probably have grey hair, a bushy beard and big belly by then too…

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hello!

      Awesome question! I think the next 20 years are going to be pretty exciting for hydrogen cars. A big part of this will be how we store the hydrogen in the car, which is what my research at the moment looks at.

      The materials I am looking at are useful for lots of things, not just storing hydrogen. I think in the next 20 years if they do not work for hydrogen then there will be something else they will be useful for. They can take up lots of other gases as well, not just hydrogen. So hopefully there will be lots of uses for them in 20 years time.

      As for myself, I do not know if I will be working on the same sort of thing in 20 years. It’s a long time and research moves very quickly. I think it’s very possible I might be looking at different things, maybe how to make the hydrogen from water instead of storing it. Or I could find something completely different that I really like researching!

      Whatever I end up researching, I really hope that it makes a difference somehow. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which can lead to global warming) is one of my big aims. I would really like to research something big which means there is a lot less carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, to help save the planet.

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